During network configuration or other network planning exercises, a neighbor list may be defined that identifies a plurality of cells that may be capable of supporting communications between a user equipment (UE) and the network. A neighbor list may identify cells in various manners including, for example, by scrambling codes associated with the cells such as in a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) based network or by information regarding frequency in use by the cells in a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) based network. This list may be utilized, for example, to perform handover of a cell to another cell, or perform cell reselection from one serving/camped cell to another serving/camped cell.
As currently defined by 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), handover and cell reselection procedures are limited to cells in the neighbor list even though the UE may detect one or more cells (referred to as “detected cells”) that are not on the list. Traditionally, neighbor cell lists have been manually provisioned and managed. Although it may not be straightforward to determine neighbor relationships between cells at the planning stage, later optimization of the neighbor list (e.g., determining missing or unnecessary neighbor cells) may require significant effort, especially if required for every cell of a network.
Automatic neighbor relation (ANR) has been generally proposed as a technique whereby the network may locate for a cell, one or more new neighbors that may be added to the neighbor cell list for the respective cell. But although ANR has shown promise, the technique has not yet been sufficiently developed.